Category Archives: Newsletter

Innocence You hold a bottle of perfume in your hand that when sprayed, makes the air around you come alive with the smell of damp earth. A heady mix of wet soil and stewed, dead leaves that transports you into the midst of a forest. You are hunting for wild mushrooms like a character inContinue reading “fragrance memories – fadila”

Christian Marclay, The Clock 2010. Single channel video. Duration: 24 hours © the artist. Courtesy White Cube, London and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York Go up to the second floor of the new wing at Tate Modern, pass by an attendant on a desk with a clicker, go through a doorway and then another, it’sContinue reading “the clock”

I want to talk about my hair. We all know hair tells a story. What length it is, what colour, what texture, what you do with it. Whether your hairstyle ‘conforms’ to society’s expectations (or not) matters. You could shave it off, but even then you’d be making a statement. Before I get any furtherContinue reading “queer story 3”

Author’s Note: This letter is addressed to New York City-dwelling, romance novel-writing, forever climbing the Jungian tree of self-actualisation Mia Thermopolis from The Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot. Dear Mia, I’m writing this letter because I wanted to thank you for writing your diaries. My first one, which was really your fourth, was givenContinue reading “me and mia – sara”

Gone Home is a narrative that defies its genre expectations to create a story that slowly creeps up on the player, leaving them a different person to who they were when they began. Let me explain: Gone Home is a first-person story exploration game released in 2013 by Fullbright. Released at a time when narrativeContinue reading “gone home”

There’s a particular artwork that has haunted me for a long time. It’s one that exists in my memory, a story I tell myself sometimes, but it’s a story of absence and forgetting. Before I sat down to write this letter I couldn’t remember what it was called and almost what it even looked like.Continue reading “the coral reef”

chloe’s queer story You’re on a first date and, of course, it comes up. You’re at lunch with the only other lesbian at work and since this is your third such meeting, you broach it, gently. You’re with a group of queer friends and it’s 1am and you’ve heard their stories countless times already butContinue reading “queer story 2 – chloe”

I have read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith at least three times in my life: as a bookish pre-teen, as a 19-year-old bumbling my way through uni and as an early 20-something thinking I was now an adult. Every time the story has been different. Narratives are not fixed. You cannot step inContinue reading “i capture the castle”

There’s a favourite picture of my parents that I took maybe four years ago on my phone. In it, my dad is leaning over a sink, his shirt off while my mum rubs shampoo into his hair. She’s pulling a face she would hate, one of concentration, mouth loose and slightly open. In the foregroundContinue reading “mum and dad”

You got a fast car I want a ticket to anywhere When I was younger, and my parents had friends over for dinner, my dad would sit at the dinner table long after the rest of us had moved to the sofas and play music too loud (always too loud) on the giant black hi-fiContinue reading “fast car by tracy chapman”